Hmmm, do you really think it looks like "garbage"? I'm a back end developer, don't claim to have much taste in these things, but it strikes me as simple and straightforward, maybe not pretty, but not ugly.
And their images: tiny. Home page 32K, the one for individuals and families 26K. The old home page picture that used to be on Healthcare.gov is now gone, but I recall someone saying it, or another picture on the site, weighed in at 1.8M.
As a fellow backend developer, this KY site doesn't look ugly to me. It looks minimal, seems to be pretty easy to get around, and seems to fulfill its purpose very well. It loads incredibly fast, and the text is all easy to understand.
I'll take bland and functional over pretty and awkward any day when it's something this important to so many. Whoever did this for KY did a great job, IMO.
Not that my opinion matters at all, but I do think that it looks like garbage. That said, I agree that whether it looks like garbage or gold, all of that is secondary to whether or not it works correctly, and it seems to (not first-hand knowledge, nor am I a Kentucky resident.)
And their images: tiny. Home page 32K, the one for individuals and families 26K. The old home page picture that used to be on Healthcare.gov is now gone, but I recall someone saying it, or another picture on the site, weighed in at 1.8M.